“What Security Unit?” she asked out loud. Braden instantly crouched, darting glances into the shadows.
‘Behind you, beside the door. See that red dot? That’s the unit embedded in the bulkhead, the wall holding the door. You have bracelets. You’re safe.’ Braden continued to huddle behind a pile of metal plates. G-War sat in the middle of the corridor and looked at him.
“We’re safe because of our bracelets and Aadi’s safe because he’s with us,” Micah said, pointing at the wall behind her. Braden squinted, then turned on his flashlight. The beam showed the Security Unit. It was labeled “Engineering Security.”
‘We need another access bracelet for Aadi. The vines destroyed his last one.’
‘With your bracelet, Master President, you will be able to fabricate one. At the end of this corridor, before you enter aft core Deck 10, you will find crew spaces. You can use a fabricator in there.’
“Detour at the end of the corridor. Holly says we can use a fabricator to make another bracelet for Aadi.” Micah minimized her window and shoved it into the lower left corner of her vision.
Braden expanded his neural implant window and accessed the ship’s map. He saw the way ahead clearly. Another one hundred and fifty meters along this corridor. Last door on the right. He minimized the window and moved forward.
He’d never get used to the way Holly measured distance. He figured one stride was roughly one meter, and he gauged everything else from there. It was close enough for him, but Holly had an annoying tendency for precision.
The corridor cleared further on, and that reinforced Holly’s impression of why the materials were strewn about.
The red emergency lights continued to flash, but they adjusted and could see. Maybe those red lights should have been called flashlights? Braden thought.
Once they passed the debris, they moved directly to the doors at the other end. There were two, one to the right and one straight ahead that gave them access to one of the great open levels of the ship. Braden turned his back to that door. They’d go through it soon enough. For now, they had to find the fabricator.
13 – Crew Quarters
Braden took one side of the door and Micah the other. G-War crouched low at the bottom. Aadi and Skirill waited behind Micah.
With a wave of his arm, Braden opened the door. They were bathed in light as the door slid to the side.
G-War hissed, his ears flat against his head. Braden could see nothing from his angle. Micah saw only walls and doors.
‘Humans, but different.’ G-War entered the door as if he were stalking prey. In front of them, three hallways led from a small common area. Doors stood at regular intervals along the hallways. According to Holly, each door led to a small room where one of the crew would have stayed during the ship’s voyage. The crew worked one year and then slept for one hundred. During their year, they stayed here. During the hundred years, they were frozen in individual cryo-chambers that made up the external hull of the ship. The cold of space minimized the power requirements as well as provided the honeycomb structure that enhanced the ship’s strength.
In this section, there was eighty-four crew rooms, four common bathrooms, two dining rooms, and two recreation areas. The fabricator they wanted was in a recreation area.
G-War froze five steps through the door. Braden stepped through, toe to heel, making no noise. Two humans rounded a corner and stopped. The two groups stared at each other.
“We’re no threat to you. I’m Free Trader Braden and we only want to use the fabricator. Can you show us where it is?” Braden used his most soothing voice, one hand raised to show calm and the other on the butt of his blaster.
“Who you?” one gruff man shouted. “Jinner? How open?”
The two appeared unarmed, but each had one foot back, fists in front of them. They stood ready to fight, although Braden had no intention of engaging them in hand to hand. Micah, though, had no such inhibitions.
She stepped through the doorway and stood tall. She stared at them, chin raised. They were taller, but thin, almost sickly thin.
“A wum. We take. You go.”
‘G, do you understand any of that?’ Braden asked.
‘They want Micah.’
‘Figures.’ Braden pulled out his blaster as Micah took one step closer to the two men. They stepped forward to grab her. She crouched, swinging a left hook into the first man’s jaw. She howled when she hit him as sparks flew from his face to her hand. He reached for her and she caught his hand. More sparks and pain.
She let go and kneed him in the groin. No sparks and he dropped to the deck plate. The second man grabbed Micah’s upper arm, which was covered by her armor. No sparks. She swung at his face with her right fist and connected, but they both gasped in pain, the man from a broken nose and Micah from the electric shock. Braden jumped forward and kicked the second man in the chest. He flew backward and crashed into the wall. He crumpled into a heap. The first man whimpered on the floor, holding his man parts.
“What the crap was that?” Micah asked, anger clouding her face. “Is nothing normal up here?”
She rubbed her hands. There were surface scorch marks on each of them, but she wasn’t hurt. She had been in contact with the man for a fraction of a heartbeat. She wondered how these men generated personal lightning fields.
One man got to his knees. She was in no mood to play. She pulled her blaster and pointed it at him. G-War moved close, his hair stood on end, more than normal that was. The scars on his sides kept his hair from ever lying down like it used to.
“Stay down!” Braden shouted close to the man’s face. He stopped moving. The ‘cat moved away from the man and crouched by the wall. Aadi and Skirill finally entered and the door closed behind them. The man looked up, eyes going wide at the sight of the Tortoid. Skirill stretched his wings and leaned forward. The man bowed, tapping his head on the floor.
“Great Eagle! No hurt me. No hurt me!” the man pleaded while his face remained pasted to the floor.
“Well, Great Eagle, what do you think? Should we hurt him?” Braden asked. His dislike for this ship grew with each heartbeat. He needed the companions to keep him sane until they could go back to Vii, back home.
‘No. I don’t think we’ll need to hurt them,’ Skirill replied.
“But what do we do with them?”
‘If I may, Master Braden.’ Aadi had an idea. ‘They don’t have bracelets. We simply put them in the hallway where they will be trapped until we return. If they go too close to the other end, the Security Unit will deal with them.’
‘It’ll keep them from collecting the others and attacking us in force,’ G-War added.
“The others?” Micah asked.
‘Another twenty or so, but most of them are sleeping.’
“Most… Out you go, into the corridor with you both.” Micah prodded the one man with her foot. He shook his head violently.
“NO! No Jinners. Stay home! Home!” he cried. He curled into a sobbing ball, even putting his thumb in his mouth.
Micah was angry. She grabbed his legs and dragged him to the door. He scratched at the floor, trying to stop himself. She waved her bracelet and the door opened. It also played a pleasant tone, and ended with a young woman’s voice. “Thank you for visiting, Mr. President.”
Since the door was open, Micah dragged the man the rest of the way into the corridor, but he started fighting to get back into the crew quarters. She kicked him in the back, but he shook it off and continued fighting. She reached back for his legs, taking care not to touch any of his exposed skin, then pulled hard, lifting and twisting. The man came off the floor and swung until he smashed into the wall with a sickening thud. He collapsed on the floor. She went for the other man and bodily threw him into the corridor before coming back inside.
The door shut behind her. Micah shrugged, then brushed herself off.
“This way.” Braden headed smartly down a hallway lined with numbered doors. They reached an intersection. He
turned right. More rooms. A door opened and a face appeared close to his. Without thinking he swung his fist, connecting hard on the man’s temple. The man went down in a shower of sparks. Braden gasped and pulled his hand back, looking at it. “That hurt!”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t do that,” Micah advised. Braden kicked the unconscious man’s feet into the room and stepped back. The door closed. With one last look, he turned and headed down the hallway. The crew still lived here. He wondered if they still rotated.
‘No,’ Micah offered. ‘These are muties. Something’s happened to them since the settlers transferred to Vii. They’ve been trapped here for the past four hundred cycles, trapped in this small area.’ That wasn’t a fate she wished on anyone.
Braden stopped and listened. He didn’t want to hurt any more of these people. They needed to get the bracelet and get out.
He hurried ahead, stopping when he reached the opening to the recreational area. He poked his head out, looking quickly left and right. G-War stood tall at his side and peered in. The ‘cat strolled ahead, tail held high.
Braden stayed at the corner and aimed his blaster back down the hallway. If anyone followed, he was ready. He waved Micah forward. She carried the power of the President and they needed that to order the right bracelet. The room had been rearranged from what Holly told him to expect, but the fabricator, built in the wall, was where it was supposed to be.
She waved her bracelet in front of it and the industrial fabricator came to life. She’d been holding her breath, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. She expanded her neural implant window. Holly sent her a stream of numbers to punch into the keypad. She blinked one eye, then the other as she tried to reconcile the numbers floating in front of her with the numbers on a keypad before the other. She managed to get the sequence correct on the second try and the fabricator started humming.
‘It’ll be a minute,’ Holly offered. Micah took the time to look around. What would these people do in this area? Holly started to answer, but she stopped him and minimized the window. She didn’t need the explanation. She shook her head, wondering how people could survive so long in such a small area.
She heard the ding, signaling the fabricator was complete. It was far louder than expected. She opened the door and took out the command level bracelet. She waved Braden to go. Aadi and Skirill fell in behind him. Maybe with Skirill’s help they could scare away any others should they appear.
They walked quickly and silently. Braden looked down his blaster’s sights as he moved. Holly suggested this technique to reduce his reaction time. Braden was afraid that he’d shoot first if something appeared in front of him. He needed the time to think. On Vii, nothing ever happened so quickly that you couldn’t think.
He reminded himself that he wasn’t on Vii. Up here, blasters made a difference. If an enemy had one, then he’d need to react faster. No wonder the ancients killed themselves. They made weapons that didn’t give them time to think, time to talk themselves out of danger.
He looked down at G-War. The ‘cat gave no sign of imminent danger, so Braden lowered the blaster as he kept moving forward. One turn, then straight ahead. They reached the door to the corridor without seeing more of the mutant humans. They stood aside while Braden opened the door. Aadi floated next to him with Skirill standing clearly in view.
The door opened and the red flashing lights showed the two men, curled up in the corridor right outside the door.
“Get in here,” Braden said in a forceful voice, not as loud as he wanted to use, but there was no sense in attracting any more of the natives. “Come!”
They scrabbled forward weakly, throwing themselves across the threshold. Braden nudged them out of the way with the toe of his boot. G-War darted past, then Micah. Aadi swam out the door before Braden backed out, keeping his blaster trained on the men until the door closed.
The flashing emergency lights showed an empty corridor.
Micah pulled the bracelet from her pouch and wrapped it around Aadi’s neck. “Don’t lose this one, A-Dog. I really don’t want to go back in there.”
‘I agree, Master Micah. Thank you both for helping me. If I was only quicker, I could have avoided those vines.’ The Tortoid blinked slowly.
The humans looked at each other and started to laugh. The tension of their situation melted away. A fast Tortoid. Wouldn’t that be something?
14 – Deck 10: Livestock Level
When they had first decided to go to the RV Traveler, Holly explained the philosophy behind its construction. It was built in two huge main sections called cores. Each of those was cylindrical, with five decks that rotated around a central axis. This rotating five-deck unit was contained within an external shell. The shell, made up of the cryo-storage units and other equipment necessary for interstellar travel, protected the internal sections of the ship. When in deep freeze, the humans survived best in zero gravity. When awake, life happened in the rotating sections.
The rotation was necessary to keep both humans and animals from losing the ability to survive in a planet’s gravity.
Both fore and aft five-deck sections were over ten kilometers long. Each deck, floor to ceiling, was nine hundred meters. With the last deck being open, five kilometers side to side, without a ceiling.
The aft section’s decks were designated 6 through 10. The deck they were about to enter was the outermost cylinder of the aft core, Deck 10. It was the Livestock Level. This deck provided some of the meat and meat products for the crew. The animals were then transplanted to the surface after the ship arrived at Cygnus VII. For the resettlement, they used surface landing ships, which were then dismantled to build Sanctuary, which was subsequently destroyed during the war. Any animal that was too large to fit in the matter transfer chamber would now never leave the ship.
They positioned themselves around the door, ready to attack or defend. With a final nod, Braden waved his bracelet in front of the panel. The door opened.
They were bathed in warm sunshine, at least what looked like sunshine. Then the smell hit them. Rank. Pig pen on a hot day. Braden stepped back and allowed the door to close as he coughed. He held up a finger so the companions understood he was going to talk with Holly.
‘I’m not sure we can breathe in there, Holly. It’s bad.’ Braden finished coughing and stood up straight, staring at the wall as he looked at the window before his eye.
‘The methane scrubbers are functioning normally, transferring the excess to a power plant. I can see, from what’s left of the engineering systems, that it is generating optimally. It may smell bad, but I assure you that you can breathe the air.’ Holly finished and waited.
‘Holly. You have to let it go. The vines were evil and now they’re dead. Worrying about these things will give you gray hair. We’ll go in there, but if we die, I’m going to kill you.’
‘I most assuredly will not get gray hair and …’ Braden minimized the window.
Let him chew on that, Braden thought. From questions Holly asked, Braden understood that his illogical statements caused Holly a great deal of grief. He couldn’t work the problems out. Braden learned from the best in how to get under one’s skin. G-War looked up at Braden and nodded.
“Holly says it smells bad, but it’s safe. Maybe we can go up a level. There’s an elevator behind us.” Braden pointed down the corridor a short way. Micah was already headed away from the door, determined not to enter the stench of the Livestock Level.
Micah’s bracelet didn’t work to summon the elevator. Braden tried his too without luck. They shrugged at the same time. Micah hung her head. She took a small towel from her pack and wrapped it across her face. Braden gave her a thumbs up and dug out his own towel.
“Sorry, G, Ess, A-Dog. Let us know if it gets too bad, and I’ll give you my towel.” He stroked Aadi’s neck, then rubbed Skirill’s shoulders where his wings met his back. He liked that. As he reached down to give G-War a scratch, the ‘cat narrowed his eyes. “I just wanted to pet the good kitty.”
They returned to the door giving them access to Deck 10. Braden waved his bracelet and the door opened. They squinted into the sunlight. Braden stepped through. The smell didn’t seem as bad this time. A great plain opened in front of him where herds of animals grazed. Rolling hills hid the far the end of the deck. To the left and right, the plains curved upward until they were blocked by the ceiling, which looked like a blue sky with wispy clouds passing.
The sun shone brightly, although Braden found he could look directly at it without it burning his eyes. It was artificial. He knew that it would set as well. Maintaining a normal day/night cycle was important for all living creatures. Holly called it the circadian rhythm. That meant it would get dark, and he didn’t want to get caught in the open at night.
Skirill’s eyes brightened as he looked at the wide open spaces. Micah nodded to him and he pushed off, flying straight and then sideways. He corrected and angled back in front of the others. He reveled in flying, enjoying the air whipping past his face. He looked around, not seeing any other birds. He looked down and saw cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep. They grazed close to each other, leaving broad open areas between groups of animals.
The companions looked through the Hawkoid’s eyes as Skirill soared over the herd and grazing land. They asked him to fly to the other side to scout the door they needed to find.
He enjoyed the freedom of flying, zig-zagging as he went, looking over the ground the companions would travel on foot.
Once past the herd and halfway to the forward end of the Livestock Level, he saw something that didn’t seem right. This side of the deck had huts, trees, and a lake. There wasn’t any livestock, but he saw large dogs, walking on two feet and carrying tools. They pointed at Skirill as he flew by, and they started howling.
Adventures on RV Traveler (Free Trader Series Book 3) Page 5